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San Francisco’s first black woman mayor is in a costly fight for a second term

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San Francisco Mayor London Breed, SF mayor

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – When London Breed was elected because the first black mayor of San Francisco, it was a moment of shame for a poor girl from public housing whose ascension to office showed that in a progressive, compassionate and fair city, no dream is unimaginable.

However, the honeymoon was short-lived resulting from Covid-19 the pandemic closed stores and tech staff retreated to home offices. The variety of tent camps has increased, as has drug use in public places.

Breed is now engaged in an expensive campaign searching for a second term.

The moderate Democrat faces 4 primary challengers on the Nov. 5 ballot – all fellow Democrats who say Breed wasted her six years in office. They say she let San Francisco fall into chaos and blamed others for their inability to stop the homelessness and erratic behavior street behaviorand all of the hacked corporations were begging for help.

Her closest competitors seem like Mark Farrell, a former interim mayor and enterprise capitalist, who is probably the most conservative of the group, and Daniel Lurie, the founding father of an anti-poverty nonprofit and heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, who pumped a minimum of $6 million of his own money into his first mayoral bid.

The other two are Aaron Peskin, president of the Board of Supervisors, probably the most liberal of the candidates, and Ahsha Safaí, a city supervisor and former union organizer.

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The streets became cleaner and homeless tents are much harder to search outBut daytime shooting in September 49ers rookie Ricky Pearsall’s rally in a popular downtown shopping district has reignited the difficulty of public safety.

“Even though San Francisco is seen as something of an icon of West Coast liberalism, the city has experienced a series of episodes that challenge that thesis and leave voters in a sensitive mood,” said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University.

McCuan added that he thinks Breed still has the sting, but “there are just issues around her.”

The Nov. 5 vote in a presidential election yr comes amid a nationwide debate over public safety and a statewide vote on a tough-on-crime proposition which, if approved, would reclassify certain misdemeanors, thefts and drug offenses as felonies.

Voters concerned about crime removed a progressive San Francisco prosecutor Chesa Boudin on a rare recall in 2022 and across the bay this yr, Oakland’s mayor faces a recall election over crime concerns.

In an interview, Breed, 50, said San Francisco is changing quickly – because of her labor – and the voters she meets are optimistic.

She led a few successful ones voting measures ensuring public safety in the March primary elections to expand police powers and force some people into drug treatment. She ordered A crackdown on the homeless tent campsites after a United States Supreme Court a decision stating that outdoor sleeping bans are permitted. Reported crime has dropped.

“We have laid the groundwork and now people are benefiting from our infrastructure projects, the capacity we have built and the technology we are using to fight crime,” Breed said, adding that voters “know that somebody is in charge and making it occur “

Farrell disputed that claim during a meeting with voters at a noisy gastropub on a recent evening, arguing that Breed had failed to take care of the streets he cleared of tents when he was interim mayor in 2018. Farrell, 50, was a city supervisor who served he served in that capability for six months after Mayor Ed Lee’s death.

He imagines a San Francisco where police feel respected and elderly residents haven’t got to rent private security when town has a $15 billion annual budget.

“The Franciscans of San Francisco, given the current state of our city, want not only a change in leadership, but also a sense of direction for the city,” Farrell said in an interview this week.

Lurie, 47, says voters deserve a real public official and that as a political outsider he has the experience needed to alter corrupt government bureaucracies.

Voters are “desperate, desperate for someone to come in and be accountable,” Lurie said.

He says that because the founding father of the nonprofit Tipping Point Community, he built tiny house shelters and everlasting housing subsidies at a fraction of the fee and time it will take City Hall.

Breed, Farrell and Lurie have strong ties to wealthy business donors.

Luri is driving in fundraising has donated greater than $13 million, including $1 million from his mother, businesswoman Miriam Haas, to an outdoor committee supporting his candidacy. Breed raised greater than $4.6 million, including $1.2 million from former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Farrell raised $3.5 million.

All three candidates also carry baggage.

Race is entangled in a developing scandal over financial mismanagement of the Dream Keeper Initiative, its flagship racial equity program for the Black community. The mayor says this system is working well.

Farrell was accused by opponents bypassing campaign contribution limits combining staff and office costs with a campaign he launched for a ballot measure that would accept unlimited donations. Farrell says he is following the law.

And Lurie’s critics say that affordable housing project Its nonprofit design couldn’t be replicated across town since it used a construction method opposed by local labor unions and required massive private investment. Lurie says the naive will likely be against it.

San Francisco elects its mayor using Ranked voting system this may occasionally give the winner who actually receives probably the most votes first place. It also can encourage unusual alliances between rival candidates, and indeed this week Farrell and Safaí agreed to ask their supporters to decide on the opposite candidate.

The breed won the election as Mayor in June 2018 serve until the tip of Lee’s term and did so re-elected in 2019 for a full term that lasted five years as a substitute of the everyday 4 after voters modified the electoral calendar to align with the presidential contests.

This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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Vote To Live launches $4 million initiative to mobilize Black male voters

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Vote To Live, an affiliate of Collective PAC, has launched a $4 million initiative to increase turnout amongst black men through nonpartisan efforts in six states ahead of the November presidential election, NBC News reports.

Collective PAC, certainly one of the nation’s largest political motion committees supporting Black candidates, has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.

The group’s efforts will primarily concentrate on six key swing states – Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – with additional efforts happening in Arizona and Nevada.

“Black men are one of the top targets of disinformation on the Internet right now, so we know they are being targeted by our adversaries, people who are trying to interfere with our elections, both foreign and domestic players,” said Quentin James, founder and president of the PAC Collective .

“So we would like to ensure that that we’re also communicating with Black men about what they need to go vote, what they need to bring with them and what’s on their ballot — educating them on the actual process because there’s a lot on the market on the web information that tries to influence them. “

James believes there was a major effort to persuade black men to leave the Democratic Party and support former President Donald Trump. In response, Vote To Live hopes to provide information opposing these initiatives. The initiative stays nonpartisan as James was unable to provide funding to support Harris due to the presence of many groups that were already pushing for this goal.

Vote To Live will focus its efforts on educating Black men about registering to vote, offering free transportation to polling places during early voting, hiring people to directly engage with their communities, and hosting events at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

James points out that polls point to a good presidential race by which black men could play a key role. The group’s goal is to register 50,000 black voters by offering resources through the organization VoteToLive.org.


This article was originally published on : www.blackenterprise.com
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Donald Trump has hit out at accusations of scientific racism after suggesting some people will commit murder because it’s ‘in their genes’

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House Democrats Seek to Strip Secret Service Protection from Trump as Legal Experts Think He

Donald Trump is once more courting controversy by suggesting that illegal immigrants are at risk of committing heinous crimes resulting from genetic aspects.

The former president and current candidate of the Republican Party within the 2024 presidential election appeared on the web site “The Hugh Hewitt Show” to debate the primary anniversary of the Hamas-led attack on Israel, which marked the start of a brutal and ongoing genocide that has killed over 41,000 Palestinians.

House Democrats want to strip Trump of Secret Service protection because legal experts believe he will ask to be confined to his home if convicted
Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump addresses guests during a campaign event on December 19, 2023 in Waterloo, Iowa. (Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Trump spoke on other foreign relations topics, while also hurling quite a few insults at President Joe Biden and Trump’s current opponent, Kamala Harris. On the problem of immigration, he addressed the vice chairman, stating that she desired to “feed people in a government way” and “enter the system like the communist party.”

However, it was his later comments about illegal immigrants that sparked accusations that the previous president was once more toying with scientific racism.

“How about allowing people to cross an open border, 13,000 of whom are murderers? Many of them have murdered far more than one person and now live happily in the United States,” Trump he said. “You know, I’m a murderer now, I believe it, it’s in my genes. And we have a lot of bad genes in our country now. They left, 425,000 people came to our country who should not be here and who are criminals. Do you know one of the worst statistics? 325,000 little children missing.”

“Let me guess…immigrants coming from Europe don’t have ‘bad genes,'” wrote one X user. “The KKK thought the same about black people during Jim Crow and after,” another person added.

According to National Human Genome InstituteScientific racism is a historical pattern of ideologies that misuse science to advertise false scientific beliefs through which dominant racial and ethnic groups are perceived as superior.

Leading scientists in lots of industrialized countries within the nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries espoused these ideologies, but by the mid-Twentieth century the pseudoscientific racist beliefs were widely debunked. Despite this, evidence shows that scientific racism persists in science and research.

This discredited set of beliefs was strongly held against Black Americans throughout the Jim Crow era, when the eugenics movement became widely popular. Scientists would encourage white Americans to marry and reproduce only amongst their own race, labeling ethnic minority genes as “unfit” for improvement in future generations. Former President Teddy Roosevelt was one of the predominant supporters of eugenics within the early Twentieth century.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for his campaign, said Trump’s latest comments about immigrants he told NBC News“He was clearly talking about MURDERERS, not migrants.”

As for the 13,000 figure that Trump used to make his point, he’s referring to the 13,000 immigrants convicted of murder who will not be in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. However, three ICE officials he said NBC’s data doesn’t include whether these people are in state or local prisons. Other officials said the information dates back many years and that many of these people arrived within the United States before Biden’s presidential term, including while Trump was in office.

Trump’s harsh rhetoric on immigration dates back to when he first ran for president. He once said that Mexico “doesn’t send its best” and suggested that many migrants crossing the border are “rapists” and “criminals.” He fiercely advocated radical border policies that included constructing a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

At a rally in Minnesota in 2020, he again invoked the science of race and told a predominantly white crowd: “You have good genes. You know that, right? You have good genes. Rather a lot of it has to do with genes, don’t you think that? The racehorse theory. Do you think that we’re that different? You’ve got good Minnesota genes.

Racehorse theory was and still is widely adopted by white supremacists to perpetuate the thought of ​​racial purity and eugenics that whiteness is the top of genetics.


This article was originally published on : atlantablackstar.com
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What Kamala Harris doesn’t say on “60 Minutes” about Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says a lot

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Kamala Harris, 60 Minutes, theGrio.com

In a preview of Vice President Kamala Harris’s interview on “60 Minutes,” the Democratic presidential nominee appeared to further signal that if elected on November 5, she is willing to adopt a latest U.S. approach to the alliance with Israel.

More specifically, Whitaker questioned Harris on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s resistance to U.S. calls for a ceasefire and escalating tensions within the region, including in Lebanon, against Hezbollah.

“Does the US have no influence on Prime Minister Netanyahu?” asked Whitaker.

In response, Vice President Harris said that diplomacy to secure a ceasefire, release hostages and increase humanitarian aid in Gaza was a “continuous pursuit.”

“We will continue to put pressure on Israel and the region, including Arab leaders,” Harris said.

Whitaker further pressed Harris, asking the presidential candidate whether Netanyahu was a “truly close ally” of the United States. The vp avoided answering this query. Instead, she said, “The better question is whether we have a valid alliance between the American people and the Israeli people – and the answer is yes.”

Cross said Harris’ response to Netanyahu showed her “ability” to walk a delicate balance each as a vp who must uphold the policy positions of her boss – President Biden – and as a presidential candidate who will ultimately forge her own path.

The political expert said Harris “respects both roles she plays” but additionally “shows that if elected in November, there will be a new side that will likely include some level of conditionality” for Israel.

Netanyahu has faced growing criticism each in Israel and world wide for his handling of the war against Hamas, which has led to more bloodshed, including Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Cross noted that the Israeli prime minister can also be adding “fire to the embers of a potentially dangerous war with Iran, which the United States does not want.” She added: “I would argue that most of the Western world doesn’t want that either.”

Vice President Kamala Harris and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands before the beginning of a meeting within the vp’s ceremonial office within the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on July 25, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)

Netanyahu’s leadership in Israel stays uncertain as some Israelis call on him to step down as prime minister. Some of them blamed Netanyahu for inciting the war in Gaza and failing to take enough motion to finish the war and produce back the hostages. Foreign experts too concentrate that Netanyahu probably wants the war to proceed for political reasons.

“Netanyahu, like former President Trump, is someone who does not want to go to prison for the crimes he committed and was accused of,” Cross said of the prime minister, who continues to be on trial corruption allegations in Israel.

“(He) is willing to double down on the war to protect himself from the consequences of his own actions,” Cross added.

Ultimately, Cross said, the one “real weapon the United States has” is a commitment to chop weapons and funding for Israel, something Biden has been reluctant to do.

Although Harris didn’t call for such conditions for Israel, she went further than Biden in her public statements calling for a ceasefire and acknowledging the suffering of innocent Palestinians, including women and kids. The war can also be a major concern for American voters, especially young voters, black voters and Arab Americans.

“She met with disengaged voters. She met with groups of Palestinians. She listens to them in a way that I think helps her formulate a certain ideology about what should come next,” Cross said.

“There is a better way,” she continued. “There is a way to protect your nation and say you are taking revenge on someone who committed an atrocity against you, but these innocent people did not do it.”

More history

This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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